This is on its 3rd subdivision, so still quite early stage, I'm really just getting the form and adding in a few of the major details before finalizing. At the moment he is still relatively low poly, but i will cut into it soon and get the details in. BUt for the moment here is a teaser of what it looks like so far!

I recently got Zbrush 4R4 so i was eager to go from Zbrush 4.0 and try some Dynamesh and other stuff that is really cool but I just haven't had the chance to play with.So off the bat once i had gone up to 3 levels, i had to set that as the lowest level so that i could use dynamesh as it doesn't work with subdivision layers.Now i could start SCULPTING!At this stage I only wanted to bulk out the mesh, adding detail is for a later date, getting the shape is the important thing at this stage. Using only 3 brushes I set about it, the standard brush to give form, the inflat brush to give shape and the move brush to relax the mesh and add weigh/gravity and to allow for a more natural sculpt. I am happy so far with the mesh, even if its toothless mouth is a little goofy at the moment and there is no real detail, but that's ok, so before I take the net step, I'm going to goZ it into Maya and cut the UV seams, I do have the UV master plugin for zbrush, but I have had several strange experiences both mixed. I find it works well for my own project when only I know that the UV's are a bit weird but not on other more Professional projects.The mesh went from an original 954 total points as the adaptive skin to a mere 4,652 total points with the 3 subdivisions and dynamesh influences.......I don't think that's too bad really!

Once I had my Z-sphere I turned it into a mesh using adaptive skin, i could have done it with unified skin, but i really wanted to start low and steady!This also gave the best results for retaining the Z-sphere shape when converted to a mesh, this isn't always the case, Unified skin is my usual weapon of choice, but i got a few funny results.With the mesh so low I could afford to subdivide a few levels, only twice in this case, to give me enough polys to work with whilst blocking out.

I have had this urge for a little while to start turning some of my sculpts from zbrush into actual models, having them 3D printed or something.

So for all the ideas that I did sit down and draw out, mainly on scraps of papers at my sisters that her kids so kindly helped me with, came a few worth while ideas and probably even more "recycled" ideas.One of the ones that I took too was the idea of a Homunculus, some sort of sentry that would see all within an evil sorcerers palace, much like a camera in a car-park really.

After a few sketches it started to turn into a cross between the eyeball floating thing from "Big Trouble Little China" and a D&D Beholder... but i wanted a bit more than that, I wanted a creature that had formed but at the same time hadn't, a monster that wasn't quite complete! I decided to keep the main bulk and tentacles with eyes or probosces for hair, and then add to it a real body, atrophied legs with a big butt, long gangling but ultimately useless arms. A creature that was created for a purpose!

So whilst I was staying with my girlfriend I decided it was time to start bringing one of these creations to life! As the idea wasn't concrete yet I made a rough sketch of what i would like with some Z-spheres, I could have started in Maya or 3D studio max, but I find Zbrush more fluid to work with when I don't have a definitive idea to work from.